Ohio is one of the states committed to helping U.S. automakers produce more natural gas vehicles, according to this story from Forbes.com.The website notes that the governors of Oklahoma and Colorado — both states with a vested interest in the natural gas industry — traveled to Detroit on Monday to make the case for producing more such vehicles.“If we had 20% of the country's vehicles running on natural gas, that helps everybody,” Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, tells Forbes.com. “There are 26 states that have significant gas shale exploration so the jobs will be spread all over the country. Natural gas is cleaner, cheaper, keeps the world safer, and creates American jobs. So how do we get to that place?”Motorists would save the equivalent of $1.50 to $2 per gallon on fuel, cars would pollute less and America would produce its own energy rather than relying on foreign oil, Gov. Hickenlooper says.Gov. Hickenlooper and Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, a Republican, “are leading a bipartisan commitment by 13 states to purchase thousands of natural gas vehicles for their fleets as both a cost-saving measure and as an incentive for the industry to develop them,” Forbes.com reports. Ohio is one of those states.Oklahoma this year plans to replace about 500 of the vehicles in its aging fleet of more than 11,000 cars and trucks, Gov. Fallin says. If every state did the same, the demand would be substantial, helping develop a market that would enable U.S. automakers to produce more natural gas vehicles.Focused like a laser
After five years of construction, Ohio State University researchers on Monday unveiled what they call the ”Scarlet Laser” — a high-powered petawatt laser financed by a $6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.(Don't know what a “petawatt” is? Neither did I. It's the equivalent of 1 quadrillion watts.)StateImpact.NPR.org, a project of the state's NPR radio stations, says the laser “can fire at a peak intensity of up to 400 trillion watts.”“To give you a sense of what that is, that's hundreds of times the electrical generating capability of the entire U.S. electrical grid,” says Doug Schumacher, the lab's associate director.The idea behind the laser, according to the story, “is sending a relatively small amount of energy – about as much as you'd produce rubbing your hands together once — through a vacuum in a really short burst of time.” The laser will be used to contribute to research on harnessing fusion and curing cancer.“This laser has served as an educational platform that's unlike any other,” Dr. Schumacher says. “These students can say that they have worked on a state-of-the-art facility. They have built things and done things that no other student can claim to match.”The story notes that more than 25 undergraduate and graduate students have worked on designing, engineering and building this laser.The lucky 1,600
The financial fun never seems to stop at Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy Corp., a huge player in Ohio's emerging shale industry.Reuters notes that the company “often boasts that it's one of America's best workplaces, offering its 13,500 employees such benefits as Botox injections, NBA tickets and a fitness center with an Olympic-sized pool and a rock-climbing wall.”Here's something it hasn't disclosed: “A group of about 1,600 employees is guaranteed a unique type of payment if the company changes hands, internal Chesapeake documents reviewed by Reuters show.”The provision “is included as boilerplate contract language for almost 12% of the company's work force, mainly mid-level employees,” Reuters says. “If control of the company changes, the change obligates Chesapeake to pay the group a total of at least $100 million and as much as $140 million in cash.”The 1,600 employees “represent positions across the company and its subsidiaries, the documents show,” the news service reports. “They include title attorneys, land men, lab technicians and senior security officers — not simply top executives who typically receive so-called golden parachutes.”Reuters says the Chesapeake employees would be entitled to these "change-of-control" payments even if they kept their jobs after the company changed hands. For some employees, that means cash payments of 50% of their salary plus 50% of their most recent annual bonus, according to contracts examined by Reuters.